“You can’t let your guard down,” he said.
“I
know
.” She was annoyed.
“I’m worried about those guys who jumped you. They have to be somewhere nearby. The car’s still here.”
“They’re probably holed up in a hotel room near the courthouse, like you said,” she answered. “That first guy is in no condition to travel.”
“Even so,” he said. He was staring at her.
“Connelly, it’s cold out here. Give me Mickey’s bag. I’m going in.”
He held the bag out to her. As she reached for it, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against his body. Anyone watching would have thought they were lovers saying good night.
He bent down and put his mouth to her ear. His breath was warm. “I’m putting my gun in your purse right now,” he whispered. The strap tugged against her shoulder as her bag took on the extra weight. “The safety’s on.”
She pulled her head back and craned her neck to see his face. “I don’t want your gun.”
“Just humor me, Sasha.”
“Whatever, Connelly. Fine.” Her back was getting tight from the cold.
He tightened his grip on her waist. “Why don’t you ever call me Leo?”
“Okay,
Leo
, let go of my waist
right now
.”
He dropped his arm abruptly, and she stumbled. She caught her balance and headed for the door without looking back.
Naya was holding the elevator door open. “You okay?” she asked, as Sasha hurried into the elevator car.
“Fine. Why?”
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s just from the cold.”
Chapter 29
Leo crouched by the silver car. He felt nervous. It was an unfamiliar, but unmistakable, emotion. The pit of his stomach was squeezed tight by it and his heart hammered in his chest.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt this way. Not when Sasha had pointed his own gun at him; not when he’d confronted a dirty air marshal in a back alley; and not when he’d traveled alone as teenager to Vietnam to track down his father and tell him he was his son.
But, now, he was definitely nervous. He was, after all, about to break the law. He had dug around in the loose gravel on the side of the parking lot, hoping for a brick, willing to settle for a large rock. Found nothing suitable.
He eyed the door lock. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t pickable. Not without a set of tools and a lot of time. He knew how to pop a lock with a pocketknife, or scissors, or even a tennis ball. But, those skills were fast becoming party tricks, as newer model cars became more sophisticated.
It’d be handy to have his service weapon right now. He could shoot out a window or just crash it into the glass. Everyone said the Sig Sauer was a big, heavy handgun. But he was a big guy with huge hands and hadn’t ever really noticed. Not until Sasha had been clutching his gun in Warner’s apartment. It had looked cartoonishly large in her tiny hands.
He paused to wonder why he had given it to her. She didn’t have a license to carry. He could be fired or even prosecuted for lending his weapon to a civilian. Especially a pain-in-the-ass, argumentative civilian. Even a little tiny one whose hair smelled like ginger and honey when he bent over to whisper in her ear.
He didn’t fully understand it, but he felt a strong urge to protect the woman who had assaulted him just one night before. When he’d walked into her office and seen her battered face, he’d been flooded with worry, rage, and shame. As though he had failed her.
He needed to get the drop on the guys who wanted to hurt her. Step one was to get into their car and see if he could find out who the hell they were. He felt better leaving her with a weapon.
He swept the lot with his eyes. The five p.m. crowd had trudged into their cars and joined the sea of taillights heading home to make dinner and fight with the kids about doing their homework. A handful of cars remained in the fading light. No people. The attendant’s hut was closed up for the night.
He checked the street. No foot traffic. Pittsburgh had one of those downtowns that rolled up the sidewalks in the evening.
He stood, ducking low, and took off his jacket. Went down into a squat and wrapped it around his bad hand. No sense hurting the other one. He made a fist and rocked back on his heels.
Do it. Now.
He shot to his feet, putting as much force as he could behind his fist, and collapsed. A wave of pain swelled across the back of his head. He fell headfirst into the car door, bounced back, and landed in a pile on the ground.
* * * * * * * * * *
Gregor looked down at the guy who’d been about to smash his car window. Big guy, Asian. Suit, preppy striped tie. Twin shiners and what looked to be a broken nose. He looked to be in his late thirties. He’d never seen him before.
He bent over the guy and felt around in his pockets. No gun, no car keys. A wallet and a cell phone. He took both, left the house key. Flipped open the wallet to an identification card claiming the Asian guy at his feet was Leonard Connelly, United States Air Marshal.
The picture looked like the guy, but Gregor figured the badge was a fake. As far as he knew, federal air marshals didn’t prowl around public parking lots after dark, looking for cars to break into. And Leonard Connelly wasn’t even close to this dude’s name. No chance.
Maybe he was a gang banger dressed to blend in with the worker bees. Did Pittsburgh have any Asian gangs? Fuck if he knew. Or maybe he was a worker bee. Some pervert who spent his days shuffling paper and his nights scoping out downtown parking lots looking for women to attack. Whatever he was, he was a problem.
Gregor tried to decide what to do about him. He did not make it a habit to kill people for free. Fact was, he didn’t kill too many people for pay, either. Mostly, he was hired muscle.
Got his start in with the Russian mob in Baltimore. But, the gamblers had all gone online and the johns usually paid up front. So, there wasn’t so much work anymore. He’d branched out. Freelanced.
Everyone understood a man had to feed his family, and the old guys still called on him once in a while. But, mainly, Gregor worked for other freelancers—small-time bookies, a couple drug pushers, the occasional loan shark.
Business was good enough that he’d hired his sister’s son Anton. And they started marketing themselves to a higher class of criminal. Some clients just wanted him to threaten a guy who was making noises like he might back out of a deal. Most wanted him to rough somebody up over a business transaction gone bad. Then there were guys like Irwin. Irwin wanted his files back
by whatever means necessary
. He’d said it like that, all intense and meaningful. Irwin was paying them a boatload. So he’d get his damned files.
Gregor popped the trunk. He really wished Anton wasn’t out of commission. This guy looked heavy. Gregor braced himself for the pain he knew was coming. Then he hoisted the man over his shoulder and dumped him into the trunk.
Chapter 30
Jerry Irwin’s house
Jerry Irwin was packing his overnight bag when the cell phone rang. He looked over at the nightstand to see which of his disposable phones it was. Pittsburgh. Where the hell was Gregor? He hadn’t even called in with a progress report.
He folded his long-sleeved polo shirt and put it down on top of the bed.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
Irwin sighed.
Two more days
, he told himself. Just two more days of suffering this insufferable bitch.
“I apologize. I was hoping to hear from my guys. What can I do for you?” he said through gritted teeth.
“You can tell your guys to get their asses in gear!”
He held the phone away from his ear as Vivian Coulter shrieked.
“That little bitch figured out which planes have the RAGS installed and called me, asking me to ground them. Take care of her, Irwin. Do it right this time. And get that damn personnel file back. I will not have all my careful planning ruined by your ineptitude. You have no idea how …”
This time, Irwin hung up on her.
He stared at the phone in his hand. Then in a fluid motion, he hurled it at the mirror hanging opposite his bed. It bounced off and the glass shattered in a waterfall of shards.
Irwin returned to his packing. He counted his outfits, then smoothed out the blazer on top and added his shaving kit to the bag. He did a final sweep of the room to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. He wasn’t. It occurred to him he would likely never come back to this house.
He zippered the bag closed and slung it over his shoulder. Then he picked up the cell phone from his nightstand, stooped to get the one he had thrown, and stepped over the glass.
In the doorway, he stopped and reached into his pocket to retrieve his third cell phone, his real one. Hit the button to dial the only preprogrammed number it held.
“I’m on my way” was all he said.
Irwin shut out the light and headed to Pittsburgh, humming to himself.
Chapter 31
The offices of Prescott & Talbott
8:30 p.m.
One of the main benefits of working for a big law firm was the repository of documents the attorneys could draw on. Whatever you needed to file, someone had already done one. And because the document had been drafted, revised, and vetted by fellow Prescott attorneys, you could be confident that it was done properly. Cases were Shepardized, citations conformed to the Blue Book, and local rules of procedure were followed.
Despite this wealth of material, however, a diligent Prescott & Talbott attorney never filed papers without double and triple checking that everything was in order, which meant that—in the end—the client paid just as much for its recycled documents as it would have had the attorney drafted them from scratch.
With all those resources at their fingertips and with time at a premium, Sasha and Naya wanted to copy a motion for an emergency TRO from the database to use as their starting point. Creating one from whole cloth seemed so inefficient. But they both knew they’d leave their electronic fingerprints all over the network if they logged in.
It occurred to Sasha that she knew Noah’s login and password information. So they accessed the database as a dead man.
Dozens of people had been using Noah’s login all day long in an effort to get their arms around his cases. If someone really wanted to, they’d be able to match up the times that the database was accessed with the names of lawyers and staff who were signed in at the reception desk after hours.
The results would be imprecise, though, because signing in was not policed and Sasha and Naya had paused at the register when they returned from Mickey’s office but had not entered their names.
Cinco had resisted efforts to install card readers throughout the office. Prescott & Talbott employees and guests simply flashed their badges as they walked through the reception area. It was more or less an honor system. And Sasha and Naya intended to exploit it.